Peritumoral apparent diffusion coefficients for prediction of lymphovascular invasion in clinically node-negative invasive breast cancer

Objectives To evaluate whether visual assessment of T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) or an apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) could predict lymphovascular invasion (LVI) status in cases with clinically node-negative invasive breast cancer. Materials and methods One hundred and thirty-six patients with 136 lesions underwent MRI. Visual assessment of T2WI, tumour-ADC, peritumoral maximum-ADC and the peritumour-tumour ADC ratio (the ratio between them) were compared with LVI status of surgical specimens. Results No significant relationship was found between LVI and T2WI. Tumour-ADC was significantly lower in the LVI-positive ( n = 77, 896 ± 148 × 10 −6 mm 2 /s) than the LVI-negative group ( n = 59, 1002 ± 163 × 10 −6 mm 2 /s; p